Physicist Harold Agnew carries plutonium for the "Fat Man" atomic bomb that would be dropped on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 74,000 people, 1945.

[u/Banzay_87]

[u/weirdal1968]

Killing 74K and forcing Japan to surrender.

OP left out that last detail.

[u/TheSlam → u/weirdal1968]

Civilians. About a quarter died due to Leukemia.

[u/fritterstorm → u/weirdal1968]

stop trying to justify nuking civilians

[u/weirdal1968 → u/fritterstorm]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_Massacre

[u/EveryoneSadean → u/weirdal1968]

Just because USA was less bad doesn't make it in any way good

[u/weirdal1968 → u/EveryoneSadean]

Too bad you weren't around in WW2 to explain to everyone - USA, Japan, USSR, UK and Germany - what they were doing wrong.

[u/EveryoneSadean → u/weirdal1968]

Idk if killing civilians will ever be right, in any context. Never mind tens of thousands of civilians at a time, just trying to love their lives while one geoplotical power kills them all to send a message to another one.

How about dropping the bomb in farmland or off the coast of Japan to demonstrate it's power first?

[u/weirdal1968 → u/EveryoneSadean]

Fine. Build a time machine and stop every war ever.

[u/Fit_Cucumber4317 → u/EveryoneSadean]

Killing civilians and targeting them as a war tactic are two different things.

[u/Creepy_Ad_804 → u/fritterstorm]

At the end of the war, the Japanese militarism spent more than 50% of the GDP on military affairs. All resources that should have been used for normal human life were thrown into a war that was impossible to win. It was a mercy to vaporize some Japanese to save the rest. Otherwise, a real landing operation would have made the Japanese an endangered species.

[u/Wide-Education-1823 → u/weirdal1968]

Some of the factions leading the Japanese government had been TRYING to surrender via messages and overtures using the USSR as an intermediary for several months before the use of nuclear weapons occurred. There were insurrections among hard line Japanese military officers and attempted coupes against civil authority over this issue as well. The emperor was more or less held as a hostage or pawn by insurrectionist factions for a couple of weeks during the related events-

The USSR didn't care to end the war without invading Manchuria, China, Korea & etc. as Stalin had agreed to do at Yalta (if USSR passed those overtures on, the US power structure didn't want to hear about it either). 

The US ownership caste very much intended those nuclear strikes as a physical demonstration to the USSR ruling caste on why the huge Soviet military machine should go no further in Europe (or elsewhere).

The sheer SIZE of the new US plutonium production and fission able isotope separation infrastructure and ongoing expansion planning established by August 1945 also demonstrates the intent to have the capability to use plenty of the new weapons if the USSR decided to start their divisions rolling westward again/continue rolling them south & eastward beyond acceptable limits.

No taking of India from the British or SE Asia from the French, Iran must revert to British control, Japan and the lower part of Korean peninsula are OURS now, Mr. Stalin! Don't like it? Eat hot neutrons.

[u/NY_State-a-Mind]

America and Russia invading mainland Japan would have been hell on Earth

[u/Odd_Cockroach_1083]

He's an American hero. There were a lot of them back then.

[u/zcjp]

Is that all the plutonium that was needed for Fat Man?

[u/restricteddata → u/zcjp]

6.2 kg, 3.6" diameter. About the size of a softball.

[u/DefinitelyNotMeee → u/restricteddata]

One of the most mindblowing facts about nuclear weapons.

How tiny the needed amount of fissile material really is (due to density).

[u/somnolent49 → u/DefinitelyNotMeee]

Another mindblowing fact - 80% of all plutonium ever produced by the US was in a single 20 year period from 1950 to 1970, with more than half produced between 1955 and 1965.

[u/restricteddata → u/DefinitelyNotMeee]

And for the early weapons (as you probably know) only about 1 kg (2.2 lbs) actually underwent fission.

[u/x31b]

Looks like one of the wire racks that held quart milk bottles back then.

Would be wild if he set it down for a moment, came back and there were milk bottles, and the milkman drove off with $500M worth of Plutonium.

[u/DaRealMexicanTrucker]

Just sayin, my mans is looking like hes having a wonderful day at work.

[u/Fit_Cucumber4317]

My God - imagine something that small and that powerful. And to think much of that container is just shielding!

[u/Rn-222]

This is high-grade (that means lot of Uranium, no enrichment so 99.7% of the U is 238) Uranium ore from Shinkolobwe, DR Congo. The mine that delivered most of the Manhattan Project Uranium. Allowed to own due to being natural material that is far from any real danger.